The Trip Home - The Big Apple - Day 2

For those looking for the posts about my ride cross country, the last post was "Day 69."  What continues here is the documentations of our trip home.  You are welcome to follow along though it likely won't be as exciting.  

I woke up Tuesday morning leery of what lies ahead.  Kenzie had that look in her eye that she wanted to see/do everything NYC had to offer.  I was happy we got a head start yesterday with the WTC and Wall Street (actually most of downtown).  NYC is a big place and that leaves a lot left to conquer today.  

Our RV Park was not far from Liberty State Park so we decided to get a coffee and take Zuri for a long walk to tire her out since she would be in the RV most of the day.  We could also see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (at least a little closer).  I think the plan backfired as I was the one who got tired.  "Kenz, how about an Uber back to the RV Park?"

We took the Ferry across the the Hudson.  The plan was to go North of Central Park for a NY style bagel and work our way South.  We had originally thought about Brooklyn and walking across the bridge but quickly realized that was overly ambitious.  It sort of worked as we did catch the subway and we did get north of Central Park but between the Liberty State Park beginning and where we are now, we are certainly getting our steps in.  We ended up at Absolute bagels and I must admit, the bagels were outstanding.  I had the Bacon/Cheddar Cream Cheese, Cheryl had the Vegetable Cream Cheese and Kenzie had the Chive Cream Cheese.  Yes it was more like lunch now (12:30 pm) but that was OK.  We walked to Central Park to eat and I decided to look at how far we had walked so far today.  Almost 15,000 steps, 7.3 miles before 1:00 pm!  

Next on the list was a bike ride through Central Park (yes, bike ride!).  After a little fiasco getting the CitiBank Bike App loaded and the bikes unlocked we were on our bikes.  I REALLY enjoyed riding the bike through the park.  Having seen Central Park in movies and on TV it was great to actually expereince it.  I lobbied hard to keep the bikes for the day but was overruled and we decided to walk to Time Square.  I did negotiate a beer at the half way point which was big.  What is so interesting about Manhattan is that each section is so different.  Downtown, Midtown, Uptown.  Time Square felt more like Vegas than NY.  Jenna mentioned that we have to see Chellese Market so we walked there and had a little something to eat.  We had a butchers hot dog, fries and of course a beer.  It felt good to sit for a while but before long we were back on our feet and went to The High Line greenway.  This as it is an old above the street railroad that was converted to a walking garden.  This was one walk during the day that I did enjoy.  

By now it is 6:30 pm and we have tickets to the Empire State Building at 7:10 pm.  We figured that we should probably get a move on to give us a cushion in case we take a wrong turn or our legs give out.  Surprisingly, made it in plenty of time.  The Empire State building tour was awesome.  I had been once before about 30 years ago and back then you simply bought a ticket to the observation deck, looked around and came down.  Now there is a museum and a lot of information on the history of the building.  We purposely got the tickets for sunset which was spectacular.  Definitely one of the highlights of the day.  

After the memorable visit to the Empire State Building, we decided that a nice ending to the day would be a slice of NY style pizza.  We found an authentic corner pizza place that was perfect.  Kenzie liked the idea of a "walking" slice on our way to the subway station, but this time I insisted that we SIT and eat.  After all, we had put in 28,000 steps and 14 miles for the day.  What is so ironic about all the walking we did, we still had $4 each left on our metro passes that we didn't use.  Hello!

Tomorrow we are up and at it again heading to Washington DC.